Helena weekly herald. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1867-1900, 1887-03-31
OLD NEW YORK.
PRENTICE MUlFORD RECALLS THE
DAYS THAT WERE AND ARE NOT.

DAYS THAT WERE AND ARE NOT.
Where Are the Boys that Used to Run
With the Machines When the Cry of
of To-day?
Especial Correspondence
New YORK, Feb. 2S-I knew New York
when rum of good quality was three cents
glass in front of the South street bar screens
and six cents behind them. Every bar then
in that part of the city had screen which
divided the price Of drinks, and the high
priced sixpenny drinkers from the
low priced threepenny ones. That was
in 1854 or thereabouts. Swell cigars
were three cents each. The remark che
smokes three centers" was criticism on per-
sonal extravaganza. These may seem as
small things, but small things denote prog
ress. AS to cigars and whisky have we pro-
gressed? In price, certainly. But the "Mose"
of 1854 would have been inclined to make
kindling wood of the bar which should offer
him whisky of the average quality sold to-
day at ten cents and hash of the bar
keeper He could do and did do
such things on provocation. He was
"tough," but not the numbering, sneaking,
ninety mine cent pistol slough" of to-day.
What he did he did ON his muscle, aided by
his "spanner' or boot toe Have we in that
respect progressed!
Nose was the volunteer fireman of 1854. He
has vanished. His red flannel shirt, plug hat
tipped over his eye, soap lock curl, trousers
tucked in boots and coat flung on arm re-
main only in the memories of the relative few
who are rapidly becoming fewer. He be-
longed to that New York era when, after
readymade clothing house fire, the "b'hoy"
sported a new overcoat, when the ununl-
formed policeman looked like a tramp, when
the "Star," Wallack's old theatre,
was the highest one uptown; when
there was no shopping promenade
above Union square, when Bond and
Bleecker still retaineda hold as fashionable
streets, when white linen suits from top to
toe were the thing for gentlemen's summer
wear. When man who had seen Paris was
somebody; when the old style merchant wore
a swallowtailed coat to business, a high side
board collar, black stock, and a gold chain
and seal dangling from his waistband; when
oyster stews were a shilling each; when the
volunteer fire companies ran the "masheen"
on the sidewalk if they wanted to and left
wrecks of old women and their apple
stands far as the eye could reach;
when at big fire the boys manned
the double deckers, and sang "The Stormy
Winds They do Blow" by the hour, when
the great omnibus sleigh, after a snowstorm,
was feature of Broadway, carrying its load
of fifty or sixty, or as many men, boys, girls,
ETC., as could cram in or hang on, or sit
in each others laps three deep, and every
body snowballed them as they jingled past,
and they snowballed everybody.
Have we indeed progressed! Have we now
such fun as people had then! Have we grown
any younger, or youthfuller, or agilera Is
our digestion or carrying capacity
for solid or fluid necessary for nutri-
ton or recuperation or otherwise as
good as it was then? Have we progressed!
What does fire amount to now? 1t is moth
ing but a prosaic mechanical affair-a hauling
to it of steam pump on wheels-a severely
rigid and disciplined affair with no songs, no
fights, no poetry, no free rum, no freedom
for the fireman's soul to expand and dare
danger and death to pluck new overcoat
from the devouring flames in the bosom of
Abraham's clothing store. Where is the fire.
mans funeral we used to have every Sunday
and the dead march in Saul down Broadway?
1 used to run occasionally with "S4, and
was awfully licked one night by "14s" boys,
who housed somewhere near the rear of Trinity
church. do not know the friend who chas-
tised me- But he was a lively kicker. I re-
member how, after he knocked me into the
gutter of that period, he impelled me forward
for an entire block before I remembered to
resume my perpendicuarity on two legs in
stead of ali fours.
1t is not digniied, know, to mention these
things Perhaps it is not proper; 1 should
cover them up, / should never allude to
them. Yet why not? / am not to-day
the person of SO many years ago.
That person, that possibly reckless and i'm
prudent youth is in sense dead. have
grown out and away from him. He is, or
was, another fellow. Paul the Apostle speaks
of himself as "dying daily;;" that is, daily he
got rid forever of a part of his old self.
Hence he argued that the Paul of last year or
ten years ago was in no wise the better Paul
of to-day, and that the Paul of to-day was in
no way responsible for what the Paul of ten
years ago might have done. In that sense
then we do progress. In that sense have
progressed some since that long distant COM
never to be known, brother Of No. IA.
Never since in this world have l met the
group of young friends who went down be-
fore that charge of GAS" boys. One. my fel-
low boarder, came home that night without
his hat and with one eye of color different
from that of the day preceding Those were
some of the risks we ran at that time in try
ing to keep New York from burning up.
Where now are the dives and dens of
Bleecker street, forty years ago lived the
towns elite. In dingy rooms where they
shave for five cents, you may look up and
see the walls and cornices which once
looked down on fashionable weddings and
solemnly fashionable funerals. And this is
progressl It's going ever on, too. 1t is creep
ing, creeping further and further up town.
Trade now has its grip on Fifth avenue
blocks and blocks above Madison square. The
brio -a-brac dealer is sandwiching himself
here and there among the private residences.
He invades these with his expansive and vio-
lently snowy plate glass window. He is first.
The second hand furniture man will be last.
with the Dutch grocery for partner on one
corner and Ling Lees laundry on the other.
Time, A. d. 1900. Only thirteen years
hence! PRENTICE MILFORD.